COMMENT: Kekkonen's mistake in 1968
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By Jukka Tarkka
One of the strangest incidents in the history of Finnish foreign policy came when president Urho Kekkonen fell into a state of deep depression after the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968. The man, whose capacity to handle stress was legendary, fell to the canvas for a couple of days - out for the count.
Not even Kekkonen's biographer, Professor Juhani Suomi, could explain what happened. Osmo Apunen, the writer of the history of the Paasikivi Society visualises a dramatic background for the incident.
As soon as the Soviet Ambassador came to tell Kekkonen about the occupation in the early morning of August 21st, 1968, the President realised that he had made a terrible mistake two months earlier in Moscow.
He had presented to the Soviet Leadership his great plan under which Finland would recognise the German Democratic Republic. He also proposed that Russia agree to exchange the city of Vyborg, which had been ceded to the Soviet Union after the war, for areas in Finnish Lapland.
He had been talking about border arrangements to be made at the gates of Leningrad to the leaders of a great power that was preparing for a military confrontation. Kekkonen noticed that he was thoroughly out of touch in a situation in which a truly dangerous crisis was exploding in the face of all of Europe.
But if that were not bad enough, Kekkonen had taken up the issue on the advice, if not the downright instigation, of Soviet diplomats Vladimir Stepanov and Alexei Belyakov, whom he had considered trustworthy.
It would not be surprising if Kekkonen might have thought in retrospect that these two had deliberately misled him in order to keep the leader of the neighbouring country dangling on a hook.
At a moment like that, the mental serenity of even the toughest statesman will be shaken - at least for a little while.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 12.5.2005
More on this subject:
 Courting blessings from the Highest
Helsingin Sanomat
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